New page to compete with the – never happen – epic HPOD’s thread. No really, I still do hand-draw all my complex design’s and was wondering who else on here, like me, collects vintage drawing equipment. Like any fine well crafted hand tool, there is nothing like a well made turn of the century drawing/drafting tool. I’m not talking that I take the time to draw-up all my design’s, I can whip-out a drawing for some kind of box thing-a-ma-jig in seconds on a napkin, I’m talking the more complex furniture pieces. So show us what you have/collect/use in your design and layouts. Yes, I have AutoCad LT10, sketch-up and a few other lesser named programs, I do on occasion use them – playing around with 3D modeling – but rarely do. I worked in the design drafting profession for over15 yrs, this was before Cad was even used like it is today. I still feel today as I did back when CAD was coming in vogue, is that a hand drawn drawing has way more class and style than any – computer generated – one size fits all – drawing program can produce.

My first entry and this is the find that made me think of this forum subject, it is a 1920’s Post scale set. It contains individual scales for 1/8” – 3” to a foot scales. Compared to my triangle scale that I used before and would sometimes leave in the wrong position which resulted in me using multiple scales with-in a drawing, these will be a joy to use.

-- Doug...

14 replies so far

Doug, I have a few things from my father like a drafting kit, sharpener, triangles rules and so on.

My daughter is an architect so she has given me a few drafting table items, I just need to make the table. I do draw most things I make but I rely on grid paper. Your rule set looks pretty useful so I’ll keep my eyes open for one.

-- "With every tool obtained, there is another that is needed" DonW ( Kevin )

My first set of drawing instruments was made by Vemco. I used them in my college drafting course in 1952. It followed me in my career up until 2000, when I had to learn Autocad. Many other items were added to my arsenal of drafting tools during those 48 years. I still have some of them and still use them in the shop for layout purposes. Autocad now dominates my graphics requirements. My lettering skill was never the best and today I can just about hold a pencil never mind try to draw a line as my hands are too shaky. I still have my K&E slide rule from 1952, a K&E planimeter and a few flat scales including one that is over 100 years old. I have an old ruling pen that I use for pulling splinters.

I’m definitely with the CAD being more efficient and flexible, but since power woodworking tools are too most of the time and I still like to use antique hand tools, I get where you are coming from when you say “a hand drawn drawing has way more class and style than any – computer generated – one size fits all – drawing program can produce.”

I learned some drafting when they were building a new school in the middle of my 8th grade shop class and they were moving the woodshop equipment already, but not enough to still work with it.

I remember when a contractor, who was 70 at the time, told me he designed the first beeper for Motorola. “Max, you’re full of it, I don’t buy it. I call BS.” “Ok”. He said that with his thick NY accent.The next day he pulled out some real old prints of…wait for it…a old Motorola beeper.

All that to say, yes, there is a certain charisma to the old drawings.

One thing I plan to do is get the exploded drawings of my 47 unis unisaw blown up and framed for my shop. No other word for it, that is some sexy drawing.

But as for me and my house, we shall use Unigraphics NX, cause I’m good at it.

SirIrbI fully understand the ease of using CAD as back in the day I worked on a Digital workstation using unigraphics. My point here is, the collecting of vintage drafting and layout tools and to see who does collect and uses them, not to put down CAD. Maybe starting a CAD only forum is the way to go for you and I’ll join-in on the vintage side of that.

Regarding exploded drawn drawings, that was my specialty. In the mid 80s I worked at BOSE and at the time worked on the aforementioned system but still drew exploded assembly drawings by hand at the request of Dr Bose, he was old school afterall. Here is a sample of one of my drawings on an E size velum.

CampD, I started my work career working for a naval architect in 1956. Back then, everything was ink on cloth. We did work for the U.S. Navy and that was their requirement. I can recall some of the horrors of working with ink on cloth. A bit of lint in your ruling pen and the ink would run out all over the cloth. Erasing it was a huge chore. You would either erase through the cloth and leave a hole or expose the linen threads that would absorb ink when trying to go over it. Making corrections was time consuming. Pencil on vellum was a great improvement and endured, at least in my case up until 2000 when I switched over to CAD. There was never anything that could compare to a hand drawn in ink profile of a battleship with all the little details, like hand rails, antennas, etc. These drawings bordered on being art. I used to have a small collection of profile drawings of other ships that I rescued from a now defunct shipbuilder. They were worthy of being framed and displayed as art. I no longer have them; they got lost in several moves around the country.

We would pour india ink on a piece of paper; let it dry and then cut it into the shape of an ink spill. When a draftsman would leave his board, we would place the phony ink spill on his drawing and watch his horror when he returned. You can’t do that with CAD.

Good one, phony ink spill!One of my first jobs out of high school in drafting was for an Paper Mill machinery manufacturer that had been in business since the mid 1800s and from time to time I had to dig out a cloth and ink drawing to use for reference (all major sized casting drawings) only time working with those.Do have a small ink lettering set. I’ll dig it out.